Various Positions (32 page)

“Kareem says he went to school with you.”

I shrug to say,
So what?

“What are you wearing tonight?” she asks.

I’m in jeans and an ordinary sweater and haven’t brought anything better. She twists the cap back on her gel and makes sure her towel is tucked tightly.

“You can borrow something. I have a million things.”

I follow Veronica back to her dorm room. She reaches into the top drawer of the dresser and tosses a bundle of things onto the lower bunk. I’m struck by fabrics like stained glass, see-through clothes that suck at the light and make blinding colors on the mattress sheet. She starts rifling through them and I pick at the things she discards.

“Here.”

She pushes something at me. It’s electric blue and I can’t tell whether it’s a top or a bottom until I hold it out in front of me. Sparkles are scattered through the material, but the mechanics of how they stick are invisible, as though sewn with transparent thread. It’s a halter dress that ties around the neck. I take off everything but my underwear and Veronica pulls it over my head. She moves behind me and ties it tight at the big vertebra at the top of my spine. I feel sandpaper crystals on my stomach. Veronica shoves me in front of the mirror so that she can analyze my whole reflection. Her hands clamp the crown of my head, like the teeth of a clip from the hairdresser’s.

“You look older with your hair up. If you had your hair like this and I didn’t know you, I’d think you were sixteen.”

She opens a cosmetic bag with a design of cartoon flowers pressed inside rings of lattice and hands me an uncapped lipstick. I put it on. Nobody has lips this color. The dress is cut low enough to show the tops of my boobs. I stare at my reflection and think I look better than I ever have.

I have to go back to Sixty’s room to get my purse, and as I leave, Veronica tells me the dress is mine forever.

“There might be more occasions, now that there’s no ballet.”

“It will start again soon,” I say.

“You know Roderick resigned, right? He put in his letter yesterday.”

“Who told you that?”

“Mary in grade twelve.”

I shut the door and walk down the hall. It could just be a stupid rumor but I can’t control my panic. I try to remember the exact things I said to Isabel on the phone. Were they enough to get him in trouble? The possibility does something new to me. It fills me with a heaviness that twists and heaves, something I want to grab hold of and wring out.

Sixty is sitting on the lower bunk, already back from the cafeteria. Her back is pin straight, regal even. No one sits like that when they’re alone and I know she must be waiting for me. I pull a pair of tights from my overnight bag and step into them, grip the waistband to hoist them up. I wish I had high heels but I can’t ask Sixty if I can wear hers, so I just shove my feet into my snow boots. I bring a tiny purse with just enough room for the flyer, take just one of the twenties my mom gave me, because the money will be safer here.

“I’ve made a big decision,” Sixty says, and it’s not even clear she’s talking to me, because she’s staring at her slippers.

Ignore her,
I think,
act like you haven’t heard
. I take the list of information my mom scribbled and fold it into rectangles over and over until it’s the size of a gum wrapper and then I put it in the purse too.

“I’m leaving,” she says.

“Leaving where?”

“The academy. My dad got me into a private school.”

We look at each other and I just say, “Are you stupid?”

She shakes her head at me and sighs like she’s suddenly a decade older, and it makes me mad enough to kick things. I send my boot into the closet door and even the handle rattles.

“What about ballet?” I demand.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to do it anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I might quit.”

It catches in my throat, her answer, and my whole body wants to hiccup or shake or scream. I should say a thousand things but they all judder in my head and my lips become useless. Veronica and Anushka knock on the door and ask if I’m ready. I zip up my parka and just leave.

It’s past eight and the night hangs limply from the sky, too lazy to rain or snow. I won’t think about Sixty now. I’ll follow these other girls and forget things. Veronica has put on high boots with heels like big fangs. She has to leap over puddles of slush and after a few minutes her toes are capped with triangles of salt. Still, I wish I were wearing them. The party is in Cabbagetown, which means we have to walk east to Parliament Street, then jog a little north. The cold will eat through my gloves soon, so I ball my hands up inside of them and stick my fists in my pockets.

“If it’s lame we should go to a club,” says Anushka.

“It won’t be,” Veronica says. “Trust me, it will not be lame.”

I see the party and hear it at the same time. There are kids clustered out front of the house, and we hear talk and shouts and laughter. We walk down the sidewalk toward it. No one notices us approach, but I still feel like everyone’s watching. I try to seem busy and aloof. My parka covers my whole dress so I’m just ballet tights and boots, and I hate myself for how stupid it must look. I open my purse and rifle for an imaginary cell phone. We move up the path to the front door, and Veronica waves at someone and calls out “What’s going on” like it’s a lyric from a song, and then we’re pushing past the murk of cigarette smoke into the hallway.

Veronica and Anushka take their jackets off and drop them on the landing where a hundred others have been left. I take mine off too, try to put it neatly in the corner by the wall so I’ll be able to find it later. It feels like rush hour in the subway. People clog the hallway in tight clumps, leaning against walls with bottles in hand. There is music coming from the room on the right. When I turn my head, I see a few girls dancing in a group, four or five of them in the center of the room making a kind of lopsided circle. A sofa’s been pushed beneath the window so that it’s out of the way and under it is a carpet rolled into a tight coil. The girls raise their arms above their heads, letting their bodies dangle and drift below. One begins to sing along with extra feeling, the way people sing national anthems in old movies, and then another girl does too, placing her head on the first girl’s shoulder. Her eyes are closed and she moves her hips slowly from side to side. It’s weird watching nondancers dance. Their bodies have no purpose and they don’t care, let them hang soft and shameless and lazy. I wonder what these girls do in the evenings, what they think about when they go to bed, because this will be Sixty now, just a boring person.

Anushka tugs on my arm to pull me through the hallway. It’s jammed with people but I outtalk my nerves. This is what I want, to dive into everything and think only about things that are in front of me, things I can actually see, the boys and girls who lean against the wall, their brown-glass bottles and plaid shirts and easy swearwords and all the things that are just so hilarious right this second that their heads whiplash back. In the kitchen, someone says hi to Veronica, and she and Anushka are absorbed into the crowd, leaving me with a fridge to lean against or maybe the counter, the knobs of drawers to rest my hands on. There’s a gap between two girls I don’t know, an entry point, and I edge my way toward it because maybe then I’ll be sucked in too.

Then I hear my name. I turn in the direction of the voice. Kareem has stepped in from the backyard and he’s standing on the doormat, kicking his sneakers into a bit of thatched rug. There’s another guy with him too, as tall as Kareem and probably as broad. They move toward me, heavy in the arms, and it looks funny to me, this carelessness in both of their bodies, as though I’m being approached by two animals from the same herd.

“Where’s your beer?” Kareem asks.

I shrug and laugh like I think this is a pretty crazy oversight too. The laughter comes easily and it actually feels good. The other guy ogles Veronica’s back and I turn so I can see what he’s seeing. Her blond hair hooks eyes. Veronica must hear something behind her, or maybe she can even feel the guy’s stare, because she looks over her shoulder. The guy waves—I guess he knows her—and in a moment they’re talking, Veronica tracing the thin skin inside her elbow with her finger while she presses one hip out.

“Georgia?” Kareem’s looking at me like I’ve missed something. “Do you wanna go grab a beer?”

“Sure.”

I expect Kareem to move in toward the fridge, but he gestures with his head to the back door.

“Let’s go downstairs. There’s another fridge there.”

I don’t get what the difference is, but I won’t ask. I worry about getting separated from the other girls, but if I stay here, I’ll have no one to talk to. We leave the kitchen and go down some carpeted stairs. The music down here is different. It’s boy music with heavy bass and angry lyrics. The lights are dimmed and the ceilings are low. I follow him from one room into another. I can feel the air between my thighs as I move, and I press my hands down the sides of my dress. There’s a couch where a girl and guy are sitting together. Her legs are stretched over his lap and I can’t see his face because it’s stuck between her neck and her long hair. I feel a hand in mine and Kareem pulls me toward a corner. The suddenness of us touching, the private fleshiness of his palm, makes me nervous. But I tell my brain to screw off. This is what I want, all this normal stuff.

He goes to get us beer and I stand by myself, look at the people scattered around the periphery of the room. Some are leaning against the walls and others sit on the carpet with their backs curved and their legs crossed. I’m standing in the middle of everything, like a buoy popping high in a harbor. Kareem pushes a beer into my hand. Its coldness is surprising and reverberates all the way down my spine to its root. He brings the neck of his bottle to his lips and drinks. His Adam’s apple bobs with each gulp and I see it like a shadow, something bulging in the dark. I bring my bottle to my lips and force back a sip. The beer tastes flat and sharp at the same time. I take a second sip and try to brace myself for the flavor with the muscles around my mouth. The effort aches at the base of my jaw but I gulp it back for as long as I can. This is just the thing that will help me. I want to be drunk now, badly. I have no idea how much I’ll need to drink.

Kareem takes my hand again and pulls me toward the couch. The girl is sitting on the guy’s lap, facing him with her legs parted and tucked beneath her. Kareem sits at the end away from them. I don’t want to sit so close to the other couple, so I move to Kareem’s other side and sit on the armrest.

“Is that comfortable?” he asks.

“It’s okay.” I try to fit more of my bum on the armrest. The covering is threadbare and the frame digs into the back of my thigh.

He takes another sip of beer. “You’ve got Ms. Franks for gym, right?”

“Yeah,” I say even though I don’t know.

“She’s a total hard-ass.”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

“I’ve never actually had her,” he continues. “But I’ve heard.”

“Oh.”

I try to think of something better to say. Nothing comes, and after a few seconds it’s been too long to add anything else. We’re quiet. I look down at the spout of my beer bottle. I can’t see the liquid inside it and it occurs to me that it could be any color, that I could be drinking something violet or radioactive blue. I bring it to my lips anyway and force down another sip. Then I feel a weight on my thigh. I look down. Kareem has placed his hand there, his fingers a little splayed. I keep my leg very still as though I haven’t noticed that he’s touching me, even though all I feel is skin and weight and warmth. My heart’s beating fast but I tell myself not to be stupid. This is how it works.

“Do you—” he starts to mumble.

“What?”

I feel him shift his position, pressing into my thigh to hoist his body toward me. His face is there, next to mine. I hold my chin very still. He presses his mouth into my mouth. It feels hot and suffocating and I turn my head in the other direction so that his mouth slips to my cheek. His hand starts to squeeze my leg, one squeeze, then a shift, then a squeeze in this slightly altered position. I watch it as though I’m watching something that has nothing to do with me, like a bug crawling slowly across the floor. Kareem mutters again under his breath.

“What?” I whisper.

“Come here,” he says.

He places his other arm around my lower back and pushes me toward him. I lose my balance and totter sideways and my hand juts out into his lap. I think he laughs at this, or at least chuckles. The girl at the other end of the couch stops what she’s doing and looks at us. I hoist my body over Kareem’s, as though I’m moving toward the aisle on an airplane, and sit on the cushion beside him.

He’s closer to me now, and I feel him register this in his body, adjust his position so that his thigh touches mine. He brings his mouth straight onto mine. We start kissing. His mouth is hard at first but then it loosens and he lets his lips drag against mine. I imagine what it looks like, up close and in the light, the wet pink part of his mouth snagging on the dry pink part of mine. There’s a weight on my breast. The abruptness makes my heart pound. He cups my breast and then squeezes it, as though testing a tomato. It rubs my dress into my skin. His mouth is pushing harder now and I have to open my own to breathe. I feel his other hand move down my lower back and slip up my dress. I wiggle farther into the couch so that he can’t get into my tights.

“You are so pretty.” His lips are right against my ear. “Do you wanna go somewhere private?”

“Sure.”

He has to lift his hand out of my dress to stand up, which is a huge relief. We walk back out through the first room and up the stairs. I don’t know where he’s going and I realize that I don’t care, that one place is as good as any. My bum feels so strange that I want to go to the bathroom and look at it in the mirror. I want to touch it the way he just did so that I’ll know exactly what it felt like to him. We step back into the kitchen and it’s like coming up for air, everything bright and ordinary. I look around for Veronica and Anushka, but I don’t see either of them. Kareem lets go of my hand and talks to a few guys we pass. He hands me another beer and I wonder what I did with the first one. One of the guys, the one with fuzzy hair that hangs in his eyes, nods hello at me. I pull on a strand of my own hair and nod back. Kareem turns to me a little and cocks his head toward the hall. He wants me to follow him, expects that I will.